Munich Chronotype Questionnaire
(MCTQ)
Purpose The instrument was developed in order
to assess individuals’ chronotypes – diurnal pref-
erences that manifest in personal sleep-wake
rhythms. Consisting of 19 questions, the scale
examines wake and sleep schedules (on both work
and free days), energy levels throughout the day,
sleep latency and inertia, and exposure to day-
light. Individuals are also asked to subjectively
rate themselves as one of seven possible chrono-
types ranging from extreme early (preferring to
rise much earlier than others) to extreme late. This
information is combined to determine the time of
day at which the respondent is likely to feel most
alert, placing them objectively in a chronotype
category. Though potentially a valuable tool for
clinical purposes, the instrument has primarily
been used in research to investigate how chrono-
type relates to age, sex, and external environment
(e.g., exposure to daylight, community).
Population for Testing The scale has been vali-
dated in adults of college age and older.
Administration Requiring between 5 and 10 min
for completion, developers have created a Web
site where individuals can take the self-report
questionnaire and have their results sent to them
by email. A second version of the questionnaire
designed specifically for shift workers is also
available.
Reliability and Validity Zavada and colleagues
[1] conducted a large-scale study in which
A. Shahid et al. (eds.), STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9893-4_58, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
58
they compared the Horne-Ostberg Morningness-
Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ; (Chap. 54) to
the MCTQ. They found that MEQ scores corre-
lated highly with the midpoint of sleep on free
days reported on the MCTQ (r = .70), and that a
respondent’s sleep schedule on free days is a
good predictor of that individual’s chronotype.
Obtaining a Copy The questionnaire is avail-
able online at: http://chrono.biol.rug.nl/mctq-en.
html
Direct correspondence to:
Dr. M.C.M. Gordijn
P.O. Box 14, 9750 AA
Haren, the Netherlands.
Email: tvrbiol@rug.nl
Scoring The scale is scored electronically by
the Web site at which it is available. Total
scores can range from 16 to 86, with the lowest
values representing extreme-late chronotypes.
However, personal scores are not available
through the questionnaire’s Web site, which
has been constructed for the sole purpose of
the authors’ research. Rather, individuals com-
pleting questionnaires at the site receive an
email providing statistical comparisons of
themselves to others in their subjective chrono-
type. Thus, the Web site itself is of limited
clinical or diagnostic utility and arrangements
must be made with developers in order to make
further use of the instrument.
245
246 58 Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ)
Representative Studies Using Scale 247

Reprinted by Permission of SAGE Publications, Roenneberg et al. [2], copyright © 2002 by Till Roenneberg and
Martha Merrow, LMU Müchen.

References Representative Studies Using Scale

1. Zavada, A., Gordijn, M. C., Beersma, D. G., Daan, S., Kantermann, T., Juda, M., Merrow, M., & Roenneberg, T.
& Roenneberg, T. (2005). Comparison of the Munich (2007). The human circadian clock’s seasonal adjust-
Chronotype Questionnaire with the Horne-Ostberg’s ment is disrupted by daylight saving time. Current
Morningness-Eveningness Score. Chronobiology Biology, 17(22), 1996–2000.
International, 22(2), 267–278.
2. Roenneberg, T, Wirz-Justice, A., Merrow, M. Life
between clocks: daily temporal patterns of human
chronotypes. J Biol Rhythms 2003;18(1):80–90.